Final Box Office: ‘Ninja Turtles 2’ Takes No. 1, ‘Popstar’ Bombs

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is on top of the box office, earning $35.3 million to come in at No. 1. That’s the good news. The bad news, unfortunately, is that the sequel is down a staggering 46% from the opening weekend of 2014’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Could the TMNT franchise be on the decline? Or is America just suffering from sequel fatigue?

The film $135 million to make, so Paramount has a ton of ground to cover to turn a profit, much less match the $493.2 million worldwide gross for the first film in the rebooted franchise. That said, Paramount execs are confident the movie can gain ground thanks to its family-fueled audiences, since more kids in the theater means more parents who have to buy a ticket to accompany them. Even though TMNT is rated PG-13, the audience has skewed younger for this film than the previous entry, perhaps due to such familiar cartoon elements as Krang, Bebop and Rocksteady, and the Technodrome. Also, the audience reviews are generally more favorable than the critics’ reviews, so good word-of-mouth could help keep this film around for a while.

At the very least, Paramount can brag about booting an X-Men film out of the top spot after just one week, as X-Men: Apocalypse took a steep tumble in week two, grossing $22.3 million to come in second place. Its domestic total so far is $116.5 million, which is less than Fox had likely been hoping. Of course, the movie is actually doing a bit better internationally, as X-Men: Apocalypse handily defeated TMNT, raking in $84.4 million to bring its foreign gross to $286 million. Its $59 million debut in China is Fox’s second-best outing after the Titanic re-release in 2012.

Coming in at No. 3 is the romantic drama Me Before You, based on the novel by Jojo Moyes and starring Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke and The Hunger Games veteran San Claflin. The movie came in with a respectable $18.3 million gross, driven by a largely female audience. This was good enough to put it ahead of Alice Through the Looking Glass, Disney’s first real bomb for the studio’s otherwise amazing 2016, which fell to No. 4 in week two with $10.7 million. The Angry Birds Movie rounded out the Top 5 with $9.8 million.

Unfortunately, it was a struggle at the box office for Saturday Night Live alum Andy Samberg and his group, The Lonely Island. The mockumentary Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, came in at No. 8 with a disappointing $4.6 million. If there’s any consolation, it’s that the highly-promoted comedy only cost $21 million to make, so this might not end up being as big of a bomb as Universal is fearing. But it’s still not great news, exactly. Then again, after last summer got off to such a great start with Furious 7 still-riding high and Jurassic World breaking records, it was always going to be hard for Universal to top it in 2016.

But how did the rest of the Top 10 do at the weekend box office? Check out the full Top 10 below: